Issue 1.11.a
“Cry Fascist: The Hoax of Popular Denigration”
“In the first half of the 19th century in the U.S., the term Whig was imported to the U.S. by Henry Clay to distinguish one group of Jacksonian Democrats from another. The Jacksonian Democrats were populists who campaigned to undermine political privilege and to resist strong federal government. They also rejected the idea of a national bank. Clay’s Whigs were those Jacksonian Democrats who were in favor of a stronger federal government and proposed that a national bank could be useful. They felt that a more centralized government could provide improved infrastructure. Which was progressive and which was destructive is relative to one’s position on a myriad of complex political issues at the time.
What’s also interesting is that the Whig party transmogrified into the Republican Party of the second half of the 19th century. The remaining Jacksonian Democrats became the early Democratic party. The political position of the Whigs at the time sounds more like that of modern Republicans today: economic independence, libertarianism and a political system free of social privilege.”
Issue 1.10.a
“Edenic Agents”
“Plato paraphrased Socrates in the Republic as saying that only artists who produce paeans to the gods and who glorify well-respected and important people ought to allowed into the ideal society. In a time and place where both gods and worthy people have been all but called into question, the contemporary citizen is reduced to the idea of individualism as mere self-glorification. Jefferson spoke of liberty and pursuit of happiness at a time when the two concepts were distinguishable from one another. They don’t appear to be any longer. The pursuit of happiness is understood in contemporary society as just an antiquated, redundant way of saying liberty.
It is difficult to grasp the idea of pursuing happiness in today’s world because of the current treatment of liberty as function of happiness. Liberty is a state in which one is free of unnecessary restrictions which are imposed on the self by an authority, an authority which exists solely for the purpose of enforcing its own will. Like the word romanticism, which is often mistakenly thought to refer to amorousness, both romanticism (breaking down social mores) and liberty (overcoming unnecessary restrictions) focus on one’s relationship with authority. Liberty, in other words, is necessary to prevent an authority from restricting discussions and ideas as to what it means to be happy.”
Issue 1.9.a
“An Interview With Jacq Palinckx”
In this issue of the Meta-Post Modernist Journal, we posed a series of questions to the co-founder of the Dutch avant-prog band, Palinckx. Jacq Palinckx is a veteran musician, composer and performer. He is also an artist and videographer and regularly uses his art as the backdrop for his music videos. He recently collaborated with Cumhachd on a project that grew from a single into a full concept album. That album is entitled Inflection, the name of the only single on the album composed and performed by Jacq Palinckx himself.
Issue 1.8.a
“The Dirty Avant-Garde”
“In the 1950s, the term ‘dirty avant-garde’ was used among the Japanese to refer to works of art that violated traditional and cultural mores. The term today has inspired new terms like the ‘dirty abstract’ which the art community currently applies to refer to the specific technique of fluid art and/or the phenomenon of abstract digital art. Within fluid art, a ‘dirty pour’ might be better thought of as a random pour with muted colors that is not necessarily done with any thematic intent. In digital art, the effect is achieved with random swirls and digital ‘stretching’. The avant-garde a half century ago did employ similar types of artistic abstraction that we still see in use today, but what made the avant-garde ‘dirty’ was use of the grotesque mixed with intense sexualization.
The dirty abstract of Bijutsu Techu, for example, was displayed in the early 2000s Taipei exhibit entitled, Dirty Yoga. It revealed artwork that is more like western Zombie Formalism than post-war Art Wave works such as those produced by the Gutai. One generally identifies the sexualized abstract nowadays with the somewhat passé work of the former Robert Maplethorpe or with the peculiar sub-genre of American monster-porn. But to see the contemporary merger of the sexualized and the grotesque, one might do better to look into Kakegurui and Loli or contemporary (and largely female inspired) artistic explorations of the repulsive, ugly or distorted body.”
Issue 1.7.a
“Water in the Death of Air”
“The United States was successfully invaded and occupied in 1942. It was for a period of just over one year. It didn’t affect the lower 48, so it’s regarded as a mere technicality. But the British consider the United States to exist based on a technicality, too. Their position is that the Revolutionaries didn’t really defeat them so much as the Continental army, with the help of local militias, managed to hold out. In addition, France, a world power at the time, was supporting the Revolutionaries. Plus it was all happening an ocean away from London; the war proved to be just too costly for the British, so they just finally gave up. The same thing happened to the US in Vietnam and, more recently, in Afghanistan. “
Issue 1.6.a
“Academic Zombies Roaming the Neo-Expressionist Cemetery”
“[It’s] surprising when Evan Beard identifies ‘intellectuals’ as a distinct category in ‘The Four Social Classes of the Art World’ but then shies away from including the university professor as a keystone species in that ecology. Universities do not only offer up small faculty-art displays anymore. Many offer their own art museums, full-size recording studios, theaters, and, of course, powerful publishing houses in the form of university presses. Furthermore, many universities at least decorate their faculty with ‘taste-makers’, ‘art critics’, ‘Art Bros’ and even offer their own ‘elegant swans of the gala circuit’ to help maintain an elite celebrity faculty. The nature of their professional arrangement may be more or less fluid, but there are identifiable levels in the hierarchy, each with its own respective contractual requirements that range from a professor emeritus all the way down to a part-time adjunct. As with any class structure, there is some upward mobility, but the structure is really designed to discourage movement beyond accepted borders. Many of those borders are just ‘understood’ within the culture.”
Issue 1.5.a
“The Sacred in the Profane”
“The Brits still say ‘bollocks!’. It’s likely because they love how Johnny Rotten could be really rotten more so than than they love the music of the Sex Pistols. The Old English bealluc was not itself sufficient enough to get Rotten off the hook during his obscenity trial. The defense needed to call in Prof. John Mortimer to court to cite Eric Partridge on orchid tubers and to read a quote from a 1684 Officer Commanding the Straights who referred to his chaplain as Ballocks for the court to feel comfortable enough that the band using the British slang for testicles was all just good, clean fun.
Americans used to say ‘balls!’. Adam F. Goldberg is probably among the last to use it in the same sense that the British use bollocks. Saying balls! just sounds a bit goofy today. That’s probably because Americans take sex seriously. Not as seriously as violence mind you, but it’s right up there. Americans think of sex aggressively, as in balling, baller, grabbing one another by the balls, busting balls, going in balls deep, balls against the wall. As of late the British are taking sex a little more seriously, now that Prince Andrew is no longer seen as a ballsy royal but just kind of creepy. But the British word itself—bollocks—still sounds Brit-flakey enough to pass muster as merely cheeky and fussy, and not necessarily offensive.”
Issue 1. 4.a
“Nietzsche, Nazis and Recurrent War”
“I sat as the sailor who from the topmast first discovered the shore of America” —Mary Shelley, The Last Man
“Mary Shelley is credited with the creation of the dystopian novel. Having to compete with the success of her previous novel, Frankenstein, she imagined a world where plague had ravaged not just cities or large regions of the country, but the entire planet. Unlike similar narratives which would grow from her story, she made the impressions of her protagonist the thematic focus. Secondary to that, she explored the struggles that might ensue not only to survive but to rebuild a society that had been decimated by a pandemic. She even received special permission to sit in on sessions of the British House of Commons in order to better understand the dynamic of negotiations between often hostile political parties.
We still imagine such sessions nowadays as the means by which human beings in a civilized society avoid the self-serving barbarism of war. What Shelley endeavored to teach us was that governments not only engage in civilized negotiations in order to avoid war, but that they can use those negotiations to justify and pursue wars as well. The concept of civilized disagreement is still idealized today and thus pursuing war by declaration is still regarded as Clausewitzean: ‘War is merely the continuation of politics with other means.’ Note, however, that ‘with other means’ is quite different than saying ‘by other means’.”
Issue 1.3.a
“Goldbergs over Icebergs”
“It’s a sale of creeds”—Heraclitus
“My squeeze hates The Goldbergs. Now, before you jump to the conclusion that my squeeze must be either a vetted art critic or simply a moron, I will tell you that they are neither and that there are plenty of vetted critics out there who will both agree and disagree with the perspective of my squeezalicious. We should begin with the critics because it’s likely think that their point of view is more enlightened. After all, they got cred.
Tierney Brickers of E! News said it’s part A Christmas Story and part Modern Family. Thumbs up. David Hinckley of The New York Daily News said it’s awful. Thumbs down. David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle said you’ll find the characters likable and the jokes credible. Thumbs up. Hank Stuever of the The Washington Post said it’s “obnoxiously loud”. Whether that means delightfully loud like Walowitz’s mom or obnoxiously crude like a Trump crotch grab is not clear, but let’s assume the latter. Thumbs down.
Well, so much for the power of the journalistic caterpillars of the gala review to light the way out of our darkness of ignorance. Our load is, alas, not lightened by such critical cross-winds. One wonders if the beautifully vetted are just full of it, like my cousin Stevie whom the adults back in the day would let run around the porch party with a bottle of Bud and a stank load in his diaper. They’d gleefully yell at Stevie, ‘Get over here, you little shit!’ He’d laugh his little 2 year old giggle and run and they’d all roar. What can I say? Times were different then—and they will be again, too, soon enough, so one mustn’t get too comfortable.”
Issue 1.2.a
“Flowers for the Xtabai”
“The US television series, Mad Dogs, was quite successful when it appeared in 2016. It was lauded as being among Amazon Studio’s best in-house productions. Featuring Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti in the Sopranos, the series was based on the equally successful UK series of the same name. Mad Dogs (US) is/was a troubling series, a tale of stereotypical middle aged male buddies who try to reconnect and catch up with each other on a trip to Belize. The degree to which it is troubling may account for Amazon’s announcement after its first season that it would not be renewed. But this may also account for why Amazon features it as a new re-release in 2022. Amazon’s programming decisions, as with other digital platforms like it, are likely inspired primarily by a production’s short-term bank roll projections, but despite its cancellation the popularity of the series both in 2016 and in 2022 is interesting in itself and deserves serious consideration.
The US version was created by TV producer and screenwriter, Shawn Ryan (best known for the tv series The Shield). Ryan is an alum of Middlebury College, the venerable liberal arts college in Vermont that has had a long reputation as being something of a prep school for grad programs at Yale. The seminal UK version of Mad Dogs was produced and written exclusively by actor and musician Cris Cole, a graduate of Elliot Comprehensive School in the UK….”
Issue 1.1.a
“ONC at the Metamodern Farbe-Center” (1)
“In her essay, ‘An Introduction to Metamodernism: The Cultural Philosophy of the Digital Age’, Anne-Laure Le Cunff describes the ‘modern’ period neatly laid out in three distinct cultural/ philosophical eras-as-movements of the 20th and 21st century. These are Modernism (the Age of Radio), Postmodernism (the Age of Television) and Metamodernism (the Age of the Internet) (Nesslabs.com/articles: 2021). Le Cunff’s historical truncation is common among academics, all of whom share a scientific inquisitiveness of one sort or another. While such a neat categorization is not really verifiable, it is compelling. As such, it reflects how the liberal arts academic is also scientifically predisposed, although they are shy (if not secretly ashamed) to admit it.
In the field of literary studies in the 1950s, the ‘old’ New Criticism (ONC) of the late Modernist era attempted to devise a scientific approach to the study of literature through a system of identification and classification of literary devices and rhetorical tropes. With it came the formation of a method of marking scansion which was devised to reveal, through close analysis, the mechanics of the writing process. At least, that was its intent.”
1 From the German Farbzentrum. A crystallographic defect in which an anionic vacancy in a crystal lattice is occupied by one or more unpaired electrons.